Adventure is not outside man, but within, for you cannot cross the sea by simply staring at the water.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Lassen Volcanic National Park

Lassen Volcanic National Park last erupted over the course of three years starting in 1914. In 1916, Congress declared it a national park. The recovery of Lassen's landscape and habitat serves as a nearly century-long example of how Mount St. Helens can recover from its 1980 eruptions, and these two volcanos remind us of the other volcanos that dot our Pacific Northwest Cascade Range, namely Rainier, St. Helens, Adams, Hood, Shasta, and Baker.

Lassen formed 27,000 years ago as a volcano vent on the northern slope of Brokeoff Volcano and is the world's largest plug dome volcano, rising 2000 feet to an altitude of 10,457. Unfortunately, the signature hike to its peak was closed this year for trail reconstruction.

There are four types of volcanos, and Lassen Volcanic National Park contains all four types, specifically shield (Prospect Peak), cinder cone (Cinder Cone), composite (Brokeoff), and plug dome (Lassen).

My favorite place was the three mile hike to Bumpass Hell, the largest of the three geothermal areas in the park at 16 acres. It easily reminds you of Yellowstone on a smaller scale with boiling pools, mud pots, and fumeroles. It is named for the local resident/cowboy who led tours here in the 1860s, and who after warning his clients how dangerous the area is, promptly broke through a thin crust into a scalding mud pot, severely burning his leg. The story has it that he then took a local newspaper editor to see where he had been hurt, broke through again, and this time required amputation of the leg.

This area is other-worldly! You are assaulted by strong sulfuric smell and the sight of acres of colorful boiling mudpots as well as soil and rocks stained orange and green and yellow by the minerals, all accompanied by aquamarine water. Magnificent scenery!

============================Nothing adventured, nothing gained!============================The older I get, the better I was!============================Like G. B. Shaw, I want to be all used up when I die!============================I want to die young at an advanced age.============================A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams. - John Barrymore============================The closest place to heaven is being out in Nature.

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I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.

--Henry David Thoreau

But in every walk with Nature, one receives far more than he seeks.

--John Muir

Now voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find.--Walt Whitman

Every journey has to end, and the end of the journey is always called Home.--Nelson DeMille

I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.--Susan Sontag

Twenty years from now, you will be disappointed more by the things you didn't do, than by the ones you did do. Explore. Dream. Discover.

--Mark Twain

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.--Frank Lloyd Wright

It's not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years.-- Abraham LincolnAn adventure is only an inconvenience rightly understood; an inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.--G.K. ChestertonThe best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.- -Chinese Proverb

The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs.--Vance Havner==========================

Note: Click to enlarge photos in posts.

You will go out in joyand be led forth in peace;the mountains and hillswill burst into song before you,and all the trees of the fieldwill clap their hands.

Isaiah 55:12 (New International Version)

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There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,There is a rapture on the lonely shore,There is society, where none intrudes,By the deep sea, and music in its roar:I love not man the less, but Nature more.~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

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Videos

of some of my adventure trips be found here
here.
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